ing.

"'Bout thirty-odd mile, I reckon. Not much on a trip, thet's sartin,
but we'll pick up termorrer. We've some quicker water, an' the rafts
hev to go separate."

"How quiet!" exclaimed Kate, suddenly breaking the silence that
followed the frontiersman's answer.

"Beautiful!" impetuously said Nell, looking up at Joe. A quick flash
from his gray eyes answered her; he did not speak; indeed he had
said little to her since the start, but his glance showed her how
glad he was that she felt the sweetness and content of this wild
land.

"I was never in a wilderness before," broke in the earnest voice of
the young minister. "I feel an almost overpowering sense of
loneliness. I want to get near to you all; I feel lost. Yet it is
grand, sublime!"

"Here is the promised land--the fruitful life--Nature as it was
created by God," replied the old minister, impressively.

"Tell us a story," said Nell to the old frontiersman, as he once
more joined the circle round the fire.

"So, little 'un, ye want a story?" queried Jeff, taking up a live
coal and placing it in the bowl of his pipe. He took off his
coon-skin cap and carefully laid it aside. His weather-beaten face
beamed in answer to the girl's request. He drew a long and audible
pull at his black pipe, and send forth slowly a cloud of white
smoke. Deliberately poking the fire with a stick, as if stirring
into life dead embers of the past, he sucked again at his pipe, and
emitted a great puff of smoke that completely enveloped the grizzled
head. From out that white cloud came his drawling voice.

"Ye've seen thet big curly birch over thar--thet 'un as bends kind
of sorrowful like. Wal, it used to stand straight an' proud. I've
knowed thet tree all the years I've navigated this river, an' it
seems natural like to me thet it now droops dyin', fer it shades the
grave of as young, an' sweet, an' purty a lass as yerself, Miss
Nell. Rivermen called this island George's Island, 'cause Washington
onct camped here; but of late years the name's got changed, an' the
men say suthin' like this: 'We'll try an' make Milly's birch afore
sundown,' jest as Bill and me hev done to-day. Some years agone I
was comin' up from Fort Henry, an' had on board my slow old scow a
lass named Milly--we never learned her other name. She come to me at
the fort, an' tells as how her folks hed been killed by Injuns, an'
she wanted to git back to Pitt to meet her sweetheart. I was ag'in
her comin' all al